Thanks for the quick responses. I think the tips about writing and re-editing later are particularly useful. I think one of the things that I have realized is: "the harshest critic is yourself" after re-reading my story some parts of it were quite good. Hopefully, I will get another story finished if not by the end of December, then early next year.

I think that's almost always the case. We may expect the best effort from others, but we tend to expect even more than that from ourselves. The ironic thing is that a lot of the time we're probably not aware of that. We tend to think we're just being through and making sure to dot all the i's and cross all the t's and it's easy to overdo it to the point where the writing suffers. I think that's one reason they say to give a piece of writing a cooling off period before going back to edit. We're too close to whatever it is we've written if we edit right after finishing it. A couple weeks or a month or so cooling off time gives us a chance to approach the edit with fresh eyes.